Christmas Math freebies

Report cards and overviews are done - AT LAST!!  It feels like I've been working on them for months. And maybe I have.....A new grade, a split class, and a totally new reporting system (without a number of bugs worked out) made for a lot of extra work.  The good news is that I submitted them last week and they came back with NO CORRECTIONS!!!!
So on to  new things, like getting ready for Christmas.  I actually only have 2 days left to teach before taking off (to Hawaii) because tomorrow is a Professional Development Day.  Wednesday we're going to see Mary Poppins which is being presented by the local theater group.  We leave at 10:00 and get back just about in time to go home, so really I only have one teaching day left.
I usually suspend what we're working on in the classroom for the last couple of weeks before Christmas break, and we make crafts and do some lessons on Christmas around the world. I've been getting together a few math games and some pages to leave for my students to do when my awesome substitute teacher is covering for me, and the kids need something to fill in a bit of time.
I thought you might like some of them, too.  Click on the images to go to them!

These three are all by Teresa at Games 4 Learning. This is one of my go-to places for Math games.  She has oodles of great activities, including more Christmas freebies.  I'll just give you her link in her button so that you can go check the others yourself:





This one from Teach with Laughter was a big hit in my classroom last year, and an excellent opportunity to practice a valuable Math skill.

Here's a good game from Denise at Sunny Days.

This is a game from The Hands On Teacher in First that the whole class can play, or it can be used as a matching activity for one or two students.










 These last ones are freebies from my store.  My kids love Slide and they play it in every season.  I have year round packs posted here.






 I hope you enjoy the freebies and are all ready for the holiday season! 

Mini I Have, Who Has Freebie Friday

It's time for FREEBIE FRIDAY with Fern Smith of Teaching Blog Addict again.  Click on her button at the bottom to head over there to see this week's goodies.
Last summer I made 3 new sets of mini I Have, Who Has games to play with my small groups.  I bundled them up with the 3 sets I already had on TpT.  They are for reviewing the diphthongs"aw", "ew", "ow", "oi/oy", "oo" (soft), and "oo" (hard).

I put one set on TpT for free so you can try it out and see how it works for you. To read the post and get the freebie click HERE.

CAFE Headers and Strategy Cards Freebie

I am excited that my Classroom Expectations posters are the featured freebie this week for Freebie Friday.
This week I am offering my C.A.F.E. headers and strategy cards.  I have used these for several years in my class and have finally gotten around to adding them to my TpT store thanks to inquiries from other staff members in my school last week at a professional development day.

Snatch them up here if you'd like them.  I find them really handy for introducing and reviewing the concepts.  There are 21 different cards in this set.  They are strategies for becoming better readers.  The four headers include a short definition for each word in the CAFE acronym. 

And don't forget to head over to see other great freebies with Fern at Teaching Blog Addict.

Make sure that you check out my blog tomorrow when I share my top three Pinterest Picks that I found for my classroom in September.  You'll want to check them out because there are some super freebies!

Freebie Friday - Classroom money

I missed linking up to Freebie Friday last week because I'm on holidays on Vancouver Island and last Friday was a 'driving day'. We travelled north from our beautiful capital city of Victoria to Courtenay where I grew up.

Photo by Robert Forbes courtesy of Victoria Tourist Bureau

I've been blogging this week on my iPad, which can be a little immensely frustrating, but I'm learning a few new tricks every time I write a post. So this linking up with Teaching Blog Addict should be super easy, right? Ha!

The freebie I have this week is for the classroom money I made for my students. It comes in colour or b&w. I used the b&w to save $$. I printed out one sheet of each denomination and photocopied them onto different colours of paper. My firsties especially loved being able to collect 'money' and spend it on reward tags. Click HERE or on the picture to grab it. 

                             

Math center activities and freebies

I love following Favorite Things linky with Teaching Trio on the first Wednesday of the month. I get so many ideas that I can use in my classroom.

                                       

I've been thinking about Math a lot this summer so I'm going to share my three of my favourite (spelled in Canadian, eh?) Math center activities. Don't forget to click on the pictures of the activities to get the 2 freebies. 

                                   

#1. The first is from Sara Ventrella at MissV's Busy Bees. And it is a very generous freebie that is always a hit with my students. It is fun to see them measuring around the classroom and out into the hall!

#2. The second is one I made myself. It is a favourite in my classroom and the bestselling product that I have in . This set of weighing task cards has 3 types of weighing activities that the students do using a balance scale.  They include finding objects that weigh the same, finding if 

an object weighs more than a given weight, and finding which of two given sets of objects weighs more. Students are asked to predict and record their answer before weighing.  Click 

HERE or on the first picture to check it out. 

                                         

                           

#3. Finally this data collection and graphing activity is another popular activity during Math center time. Students survey their classmates then make a graph of their results. They enjoy it so much that I have made a bunch of different seasonal ones that are in my store. The beauty of having an activity that is similar in the centers over the course of the year is that the stdents are already familiar with it so you don't have to teach them how to do a new activity when you switch out your stations. 

I have this Back to School set available in my TpT store as a limited time freebie right now so click a picture to grab it now. 

Scaredy Squirrel Goes Camping

Last fall I discovered Scaredy Squirrel and I love the books.  (The kids in my class were WAY ahead of me...they know all about him!)
I read Scaredy Squirrel Goes Camping (by Melanie Watt) to them. It was just recently published at the time, and none of them had read it yet.

Scaredy Squirrel is so popular that we already had 4 out of five of the books in our school library and I have recently found them on Epic! (if you don't have this app yet you MUST check it out.  I blogged about it HERE).  They are also on Just Books Read Aloud, another free reading app that I recently found.  Listening to books and reading on apps is fantastically popular in my classroom.  Even the more reluctant readers love getting the chance to do these centers.

I made a set of activities to accompany Scaredy Squirrel Goes Camping and my class completed several of them when we finished reading the book together.  The full product is available at Teachers Pay Teachers, but I have made a preview freebie that includes 3 of the 10 activities included in the full package.  The link for the freebie is at the end of the post.

The first is a craftivity Emergency kit.  Scaredy Squirrel is always prepared for disasters that he is sure are about to befall him!

  

I adapted the emergency kit idea from Jennifer's Teaching Tools which you can find here.

The second activity is an interview sheet.  Students make up questions they would ask Scaredy if they were a reporter, and then answer as if they were Scaredy.

The third is a sheet that I always keep in my Listening Center for kids to complete when they have finished listening to a book.  It is called Making Connections and requires students to make either a Text to Text, Text to Self, or Text to World connection, write about what happened in the story, and explain what it reminded them of.

I hope you enjoy using these in your classroom.  Get the freebie  HERE, then check out more of this week's freebies at Teaching Blog Addict. 

Math workshop - schedule plus freebie

I have done Guided Reading workshops and run Language Arts centers in my classroom for years, but until three years ago I had never thought of applying these ideas to Math.  But what better place to meet with small groups of students!  In my opinion the benefits of teaching Math to a few students at close range is even more beneficial than with LA.  There are so many ways that students construct wrong ways of doing things in Math and small groups offer the best opportunity to either nip these in the bud or avoid them altogether, since the students are much more likely to be giving their full attention in this more intimate setting.

I am fortunate to have a large bank of time for Math.  Although I am only teaching 3 days/week, I am only teaching LA, Math, and Art, so I can schedule 90 minutes each day for Math.

Our Math time breaks down like this:
10 minutes - Math facts review with a partner 
20 minutes -  Meet together at the carpet for group instruction.  During this time I introduce new concepts or review what we have been working on, give them the rundown on the individual work they'll be doing that day, and do a quick spiral review of concepts.  I made a set of cards (grade 2) for these.  If you'd like a set for free click HERE.  I cut them into individual months, mounted them on construction paper, laminated them, and put them onto a ring that I hang on my Math wall for easy access.
20 minutes - Individual seat work and marking.  (Click HERE to see how Math is marked in my classroom.  There's a freebie in this post, too.)
30 minutes - Math centers
10 minutes - Math writing

I meet with my small groups during the last hour of the Math block, starting with the group that needs the most help.  Then I work through the other groups.  I don't have time for every group, every day, but I will have met with the first group three times and usually at least twice with the others.

When I first got started using Math workshops I tried rotating the various activities in 20 minute blocks, like I do for Language Arts.  One group does seat work, while others are at centers, working on Math facts, doing Math journals or meeting with me.  I set up a rotation board for the different groups and we did our Math block this way for several months, but I wasn't really satisfied that this was the best set up for me.
To begin with I often forgot to set my timer so they would rotate.  (This wasn't really a major objection and could've been overcome by setting a timer on my phone.) 
More concerning was that the activity the students were doing didn't always fit neatly into a 20 minute time slot.  Math facts usually need less - by the time 10 minutes was up they were ready to move on and often got distracted when it went longer.  Their seat work sometimes took longer, sometimes less, depending on the students' Math abilities, so I'd have to make extra papers for the fast finishers to do each day, and the students who were struggling didn't get finished.  Math centers definitely needed more time.  Often they would be part way through a center without having recorded their work and time would be up.  This was very frustrating for them and for me.  Also the reason I forgot to send them on to their next rotation was usually that I needed more time with the group I was working with.
So I decided that they would all do their seat work, centers, and writing at the same time (except the ones who were working with me).  The only challenge that this presented was that I needed more options for centers, which will the topic for the next time I post about Math.

I am linking up with Third Grade Doodles for Math Workshop Monday.  To see more ideas for Math workshop click HERE.   She's got a great Giveaway going today.

Halloween plans and a freebie

Halloween is on it's way.  Are your students starting to get excited?  I've definitely noticed that the level of noise in my classroom is increasing this week.
Right now we're working on Communities and Responsibilities in Social Studies, because I like to hold off on doing Halloween activities until "the week of" to avoid the over stimulation.  Luckily Halloween falls on a Friday this year:  the best possible scenario!

But I must admit that I'm getting a bit excited about it myself.  Especially since we picked the pumpkins from our garden last weekend.  We had lots of plain ones that will be good for carving, but these were a variety we put in called "Cinderella".  We had no idea just what they were like until mid August when they really started to take shape.  They won't be good for carving, but very cool for display.  (They got pretty big).

One of the grade one teachers in our school always organizes rotating Halloween centers for us on the morning of Halloween.  We have 6 primary classes this year, so that means blocks of about 25 minutes.  Last year I decided to use my time with each class taking a group Halloween picture that I emailed to their teachers who forwarded them to the parents.  Then we did "Looking for Dracula" by the fabulous Charlotte Diamond, which I used to have on tape but now have on iTunes.  I love doing it and the kids always enjoy it too.  I found a video on You Tube:

During the week leading up to Halloween this year I made a set of survey questions and a graphing activity to go with them to put into my Math centers.  The kids always love doing surveys and I made a back-to-school set like this that we did in September and it was a huge hit.

First they choose the question they want to ask.  I go over them first so the grade ones know what they are, then the pictures help them remember.  Then I give them the graphing sheet and the title and labels that go with it.  Once they have glued the question and the labels onto the graphing sheet they get a class list and they can go around surveying their classmates.  Each time they ask someone they cross the name off the list and put an X in the box above the answer to make the graph.

When we did it in September I had quite a few kids ask if they could do more than 1 survey.  To me that is the hallmark of a good classroom activity;  they enjoy it so much that they want to do it again.
Click here to see it in my store.

I'm looking forward to seeing all the great ideas that will be popping up on teaching blogs this week and next.  I'll be back with a few more of my own, too.

Here is a link to a Halloween freebie in my store.  It's a pack of pumpkin frames and writing papers.

If Everybody Did with a FREEBIE

If Everyone Did by Jo Ann Stover was one of my favourite book finds last year. I read it to my grade two class in September and they howled with laughter at the outrageous consequences when everyone breaks the rules. 

Rhyming text and hilarious illustrations engage the book's audience and make it fun to read aloud. 

If one person walks inside with muddy shoes footprints are left behind, but:

If one person squeezes the cat: 

BUT:

The book provides excellent opportunities to make text-to-self connections and is a perfect lead-in for a discussion about personal and community responsibility. 

The best part, though, is that Stover ends What If Everybody Did with examples what happens when good choices are made. 

After reading the book I had the class draw pictures of one situation where kids at school all do something they shouldn't and the consequences (an example was everyone left their things out on the floor instead of putting them away in their lockers). Then they did a second drawing of something they could do to make the school or our classroom a better place. 

Looking back, I think I should have read this book at least 2 or 3 times to my class last year!

I made an Incentive tag to give to students who help others. 

If you'd like it you can get it free at my TpT store by clicking here.

For more books that foster responsibility click to visit Emily at The Reading Tutor/OG for Mentor Monday.